There are two words wanting in French which an Englishman can scarcely do without, _comfort_ and _home_. The hiatus is not alone in the language, the idea is wanting. Speak to a Frenchman of pleasure, he can understand you--of gaiety, amusement, dissipation, he has no difficulty: but talk to him of _comfort_, and explain it how you will, you can never make it intelligible to him. In like manner, he will comprehend everything that can be said on the theatre, the coffee-house, the club, the court, or the exchange; but _home_--there is no such thing. _Chez-soi_ is not the word: _intérieur_ comes nearer to it, for that particularises, but still it is not home--home, where all the affections of domestic life, all the kindly feelings of the heart, all the bright weaknesses of an immortal spirit clad in clay--where all, all the rays of life centre, like a gleam of sunshine breaking through a cloud, and lighting up one spot in the landscape while all the rest is wrapt in shadow. We may carry ambition, pride, vengeance, hatred, avarice, about with us in the world; but every gentler feeling is for _home_: and miserable is he who finds no such resting-place in the wide desert of human existence. I speak not of all Frenchmen. I have met some who had the feeling in their hearts, and scarcely knew what it meant. They had formed themselves a home, but had not a name for it. But these are the accidents, and in the generality of French families it is not, nor it cannot be so. Marriage in France is one of the most extraordinary things that ever was invented. It is a state into which men enter, seemingly, from a principle of inevitable necessity--the _besoin de se marier_, or else who would engage their fate to that of a person whose mind, education, and disposition, is generally wholly unknown to them? The first principle of a woman's education all over the world is deceit. She is taught, and wisely taught, to conceal what she feels. But in France they try to teach her not to feel it at all. Educated in the greatest retirement, watched with the most jealous suspicion, as soon as a favourable opportunity presents itself, she is brought forward to show off all her accomplishments, before a man, who is destined for her husband, and is bidden to assume his tastes, and coincide in his opinions. Little affectation, however; is necessary. It is all a matter of convention. The one party wishes for a wife, and marries without knowing anything about her; the other wishes for liberty, and is married without caring to whom. This is the great change in a Frenchwoman's life. While single she is guarded, and restrained in everything; each action each word, each look is regulated; but the moment she is married all is freedom, gaiety, and dissipation. From a caterpillar she becomes a butterfly, and flutters on amongst the multitude to be chased by every grown child that sees her. These are not the materials for happiness! But this is not all. Every